THE LAST RIDER - Mark Reviews Movies

The Last Rider, Roadside Attractions

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 22, 2023

Officially, Greg LeMond is the only American cyclist to win the Tour de France, an accomplishment that was reinstated after the other cyclist had his wins revoked. That other rider, of course, was Lance Armstrong, whose comeback tale of overcoming personal adversity made him famous—until the doping scandal transformed his entire professional career into something infamous. Armstrong's name is raised once in The Last Rider, a documentary about a triumphant moment of LeMond's racing career, but the movie still seems to exist in the shadow of the legend of that other, pre-scandal cyclist.

It's not enough that LeMond thrice won the Tour de France. He needs a legend, too.

Director Alex Holmes is more than happy to give that to his subject, who also overcame personal adversity to accomplish what he did. Watching this movie, which eventually becomes an extend recap of the 1989 race from Luxembourg through a large section of France, feels as if we're only scratching the surface of just how noteworthy LeMond's various comebacks actually were.

The problem, perhaps, is that the scope of Holmes' narrative is so limited. There's a brief bit of biography for LeMond's youth, as he discovers a love of cycling and quickly falls head-over-heels in love with the woman who would become his constantly supportive wife, and with that out of the way, cycling takes over the full breadth of the portrait of his life. There are other personal details, obviously, but even those are framed in relation to how they affected his ability and willingness to compete at the sport he loved. It's one thing to define a person by their profession, but Holmes' movie comes to define its entire existence on the sport—whether or not LeMond actually plays a part in whatever is happening at a given moment in the story.

That's a strangely impersonal choice for a documentary that initially seems so intimately connected to LeMond's life, career, and how he perceives both of those things. The retired cyclist is the primary interview subject for the movie, with his wife Kathy offering an openly emotional complement to LeMond's more straightforward telling.

LeMond's passion for cycling began when his family moved to the Lake Tahoe area, with the then-teenage starting to ride in order to better learn how to ski. After spending a lot of time riding with his father, though, the notion of skiing was lost. His life would be about cycling, and that meant finding a way to get to Europe, where the sport has had a long, storied history and the opportunity to actually make a living in it.

LeMond recounts being recruited for a team dominating the world of cycling right off the bat, finding himself a teammate to Bernard Hinault and coached by Cyrille Guimard. The coach is another of the major interview subjects here, offering some kind word about the young LeMond's talent and promise, before a professional betrayal put a wedge between the American and his European teammates.

That betrayal, according to LeMond's wife, was the catalyst for reawakening an old trauma in her husband. It's a story of abuse (not involving family) that clearly needs to be told—not only because it so affected the man, but also because it can serve as an aid to other survivors. Here, though, Holmes only seems interested in raising it and examining it as far as it figures into how the memory of trauma affected LeMond's cycling. It's an unfortunate disservice.

Indeed, most of these personal aspects of LeMond's story seem to be building toward establishing the stakes of the '89 Tour, which came after LeMond's previous victory, his sudden expulsion from the team, and a hunting accident that almost killed him. Unintentionally shot with a shotgun by his brother-in-law, LeMond nearly died, had pellets from the round still stuck inside his body, and had a lung collapse. The pain of this—not only the physical damage, but also the emotional devastation for the rest of his family and especially the brother-in-law—becomes one piece of the stakes of the race, particularly because nobody—LeMond included at certain times—believed he would be able to compete again, let alone become a serious challenger in an upcoming Tour de France.

Whatever impact and implications this second trauma might have had on LeMond's life outside of cycling, though, are briefly touched upon, before the third act becomes devoted to a day-by-day, play-by-play account of the comeback race. On top of that, LeMond is often overshadowed by others, including previous year's champion Pedro Delgado, who's also interviewed here, and his former coach explaining the strategy of the competitive, temperamental cyclist Laurent Fignon, presumed to be one of the top contenders to win.

Using archival footage of the race, Holmes certainly gives us a sense of the back-and-forth nature of this Tour, the result of which comes down to a matter of seconds. With so much of LeMond's life left unexplored until and after that point, though, the movie's priorities ultimately feel misdirected.

Obviously, LeMond's story of overcoming such hardships is a worthy one to tell, and it raises his accomplishments to much more than a piece of trivia about the nationalities of winners of an international sporting competition. The Last Rider, though, does seem more interested in the sport and the trivia than the man himself.

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